Mario Lubetkin, Italian-Uruguayan journalist, IPS Director General.

He worked as correspondent for several Italian and Latin American print media, and as communications adviser for several U.N. agencies and regional integration organisations, such as ALADI (Latin American Integration Association), CEFIR (Training Centre for Regional Integration), ARPEL (Latin American Oil Companies Association) and also for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

In addition to his duties as Director General, he coordinates the IPS project “Tierramérica”, the leading communications platform on environment and sustainable development in Latin America, and is vice-president of IMS, a U.S.-based company specialising in pan-regional communication services. He has also coordinated several communications seminars for UNICEF, UNESCO, the European Union and others, and given lectures at many conferences on communication in the globalisation era, integration, and issues related to the environment and sustainable development in Europe and Latin America.

Having joined IPS in 1979 at its Headquarters in Rome, in 1984 he transferred to Uruguay as a correspondent and was appointed Regional Director for Latin America in 1995. In September 2002, the IPS Board of Directors unanimously appointed him Director General.